Children die after 10 hours locked inside cupboard

A mother has been accused of killing two of her children by cramming them into a tiny cupboard for at least ten hours while she visited friends.

The home in Indianapolis where two children died after being shut in a cupboard for ten hours by their mother, Edyan Farah

Edyan Farah allegedly shut her five children in a closet that was 1.8m (6ft) tall but only about 40cm (1ft 6in) deep. Her daughter Zuhur, five, and three-year-old son Zakariya were ‘stiff and unresponsive’ when she returned to the home in Indianapolis, Indiana, it was claimed.

‘It’s just a very sad case,’ Lt Jeff Duhamell, of the city’s police.

‘It’s one of the worst ones I’ve seen – to be placed in closet about 6ft by 18in and a bed pushed up against it for a minimum of ten hours, we think possibly a lot longer, and probably not for the first time.’

Farah told police she was ‘not in her right mind’ when she locked the children away.

She did not report the deaths, which were discovered on Sunday when a family friend called to visit.

Her children had looked underfed before the incident, said neighbours.

‘Every morning, I would hear the little girl say, “No, no”, like she was locked out of the house,’ added one.

Farah, originally of Somalia, has been charged with two preliminary counts of neglect.

The 28-year-old’s other children, aged seven, five and one, were unharmed in the incident and have been placed in care.

It is not yet known how Zuhur and Zakariya died and toxicology tests could take up to a month.